Ballet and opera in Moscow

Throughout the 20th century, Russia has been the country that wholeheartedly supported performing arts (even if only to serve its propaganda purposes), but ballet was held in especially high regard which allowed the ballet companies to stage lavish productions and turn their main dancers into stars adorned and admired by many. Opera and drama did not lag behind in inventiveness, artistic mastery and cultural importance, but ballet was the form of Russian arts that was highly privileged and internationally most famous. As the capital of the country for most of its history, Moscow was naturally the main center where ballet prospered. The dance was first introduced to Russia in the 17th century and evolved to incorporate elements of Russian folk dancing. It soon became the highly regarded form of performing arts, much more noble than drama theater. During the 18th and 19th centuries Moscow only had two theaters: the bolshoi (meaning "large" or "grand" in Russian) where ballet and opera were performed, and maly (meaning small, lesser or little in Russian) where drama, as a less noble form of art than ballet and opera, was performed.

Nina Ananiashvili performing Swan Lake. This famous Tchaikovsky's ballet is just one of numerous ballet classics that are regularly staged at the Bolshoi Theater.

The current Bolshoi Theater in Moscow dates from 1824, and was built to replace an older theater which perished in a fire in 1805. Since then the Moscow Bolshoi Theater has been steadily associated with ballet and has seen many notable performances on its stage: it was here that Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake premiered in 1877, and many other famous ballets were performed over the history. Over 800 performances of ballet and opera have been staged at the Bolshoi. The theater has over the years seen numerous productions of such ballet classics as The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Spartacus, Don Quichote, Giselle and many others. Its status as the world-famous ballet theater the Bolshoi owes to its brilliant performers such as Galina Ulanova (1909-1998) whom Prokofiev called "the genius of Russian ballet", Olga Lepeshinskaya (b. 1916) who became famous at 18 after performing the main role in Yuri Olesha's Three Fat Men, and Ekaterina Maximova (b. 1939) who won the People's Artist of the USSR award and the gold medal at the International Ballet Competition Varna in 1964. Today the outstanding productions of the Bolshoi ballet company rest on the performances of a generation of talented young artists that include the Georgian ballerina Nina Ananiashvili, Nadezda Gracheva, Ilse Liepa, Galina Stepanenko, Anastasia Volochkova and others. The Bolshoi Theater also regularly stages productions of opera classics, such as Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride, the operas of Tchaikovsky, Glinka's A Life for the Tsar and many more. As a repertory theater, the Bolshoi has a constant repertoire from which it draws and usually introduces two to four new productions each season. The Bolshoi usually stages performances of Russian ballet and opera classics, although many works of foreign composers are often stages, such as the operas of Rossini, Verdi or Puccini. Many of these operas are stunningly elaborate and complex performances which can have dozens of singers and dancers on stage during particular scenes.

The Bolshoi is not the only theater in Moscow where you can go to see ballet or opera, there are many others. If you want a different kind of ballet experience head for the New Ballet theater which stages productions that combine ballet with modern dance, pantomime and dramatic art. This type of performance art is called "plastic ballet" and is staged at a small venue (at Novaya Basmannaya Street 25/2, accessible from Krasnye Vorota metro station) which allows the audience an intimate experience of innovative contemporary dance. If you're interested in innovative and sometimes experimental opera performances, you'll find them at the Helikon Opera Theater. The Helikon Opera was founded at the beginning of the 1990s by Dmitry Bertman who is still the director. The intimate setting of the theater which can seat an audience of 250 people allows for a closer interaction between the performers and the audience and is therefore ideal for the type of opera staged here: artistically daring and with an emphasis on the dramatic aspect of opera, but nevertheless excelling in music and singing. If you prefer old classics when it comes to opera, you'll find many loved classics at the Stanislavsky & Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, the Moscow New Opera Theater and the Chamber Opera Theater. Stanislavsky & Nemirovich-Danchenko ballet and opera company was founded when the legendary theater director and actor Constantin Stanislavsky joined up with another legend of the Moscow theater scene, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, and applied his acting and dramatic methods (known as the Stanislavsky system) to the art of opera and ballet. The Moscow New Opera Theater is among the youngest opera theaters in Moscow: it was founded in 1991 by Evgeny Kolobov when he left the Stanislavsky opera company and is directed by him still. New Opera Theater, which is widely acclaimed for their exceptional orchestra, stages Russian and foreign classics of operas as well as classical music. Chamber Opera Theater has a unique and rich repertoire, offering European classics and favorites along with many old Russian operas that are rarely seen.